How Accommodating to Player Preferences Should the GM Be?

[Guest 6801718]

"Talk to your players" is not an offensive idea. This—



—is a bit offensive. Not what you're saying per se, but the implication that all GMs need to approach the game this way, and it'll make every GM's game better, because that's how it worked out for you. When it could—and in fact does, on occasion—go the opposite way.

By way of an example, that's how it worked for me, but if I were to stand up on a proverbial soapbox and holler out, "Hey, everybody! Y'all need to approach GMing the way I do now, because I used to do it one way, then I found a different way that worked better for me, so all-y'all need to fall in line!", you would rightly consider that asinine.

You're not doing what I'm doing; I'm not interested in doing what you're doing, at least not anymore; and that's okay.



And there it is. Bold of you to assume that others haven't tried what you propose and rejected it for one valid reason or another. This reeks of an unjustified teleology, where every GM is resting on some rung of the ladder of game-style progress, with the most permissive and collaborative approaches at the pinnacle.

For what it's worth, my players have never been more engaged than when I started running hard-landscape sandbox games with open tables, where players get to step on up and play the game I have on offer but don't have any say in the worldbuilding (both because the worldbuilding is already done, and because the game is mainly about exploration and discovery).



Then you've probably misunderstood what I'm getting at here. I'm talking about how GMing works in the broadest possible terms, irrespective of play-style. It's just a fact that the GM is in the business of managing player gratification, no matter whether they're doing something fudgy and neo-trad (placing a magical weapon perfectly spec'd for a player character's build in a chest in the very next room, on a mid-session whim to adjust the game's balance and reward the player for something) or something very OSR and hard-landscape (stocking a dungeon with randomly diced treasures six months before the campaign begins with no meaningful knowledge of what any player characters may be like). How the GM winds up going about it is beside the point.

Oh, I'm not the only one who has adopted this philosophy of collaborating with my players. There are entire, very successful, game systems designed around this philosophy. Designed by people who decided to talk to their players. If you have valid reasons this didn't work for you, you haven't shared them. If you actually did try it and it didn't work, I'd actually like to hear why. It could help avoid pitfalls I may encounter down the line. You seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing. Saying that your players are more engaged now than they were before is by no means an indication that they are as engaged as they could be.

 

[overgeeked]

Abdicating a decision to the dice is still deciding to do that.

Yes, but you're not managing player gratification. You're literally ignoring player gratification and leaving it to the dice and the players. Again, it's like saying bald is a hair color. It's not, it's a lack of hair. Just like in OSR-style play the referee isn't managing the players' gratification, the referee is ignoring player gratification. Ignoring something is not a form of managing it.

 

[Jack Daniel]

▯

 

[Guest 6801718]

Well, I don't approach GMing as an optimization problem.



It really is, at least in this case.

What is player gratification? It's whatever a player gets out of playing, whatever feelings are elicited by the act of play.

In the case of OSR play, these feelings commonly include tension, catharsis, the thrill of discovery or victory, and even the sting of defeat. Setting up a pre-stocked dungeon ahead of the game enables all of this; a well-designed dungeon takes them into account long before any player characters are ever rolled up.

If you don't think that's a kind of management of player gratification, you're not operating from the definition I just gave. Which is okay, but it means we're talking past each other.

Neither do I. I just always try to improve.

 

[bloodtide]

This depends on the player.

For players new to the game or players new to my game, it will be a hard No. They will just be wasting game time with their weird wacky character. They might have some fun being disruptive in the game...if that is thier goal; but they will never have fun playing that character in the game.

If it's a player I know and is an average player, it will be a soft no. I'll give the player a quick chance to make a pitch. It's unlikely they will make a good one...but it is possible.

If it' a player I know who is a good player, then they are free to play whatever they wish.


In short, you have to earn the permission to play such a character in my game.

 

[overgeeked]

we're talking past each other

Yeah. Clearly. I'm down for Zen koans and Taoist riddles and all that, but this "by not doing the thing you're actually doing the thing" is too much.

 

[Theory of Games]

No one demanded you participate.

The hobby demands experienced GMs answer the questions of novice GMs to create more enjoyable RP for players.

So it is just YOUR game?

My game what? Your sentence looks incomplete here.

Except the "snowflakes" apparently...

No group should ever tolerate disruptive, egotistical snowflakes who believe their whim trumps Group Agency.

 

[grankless]

No group should ever tolerate disruptive, egotistical snowflakes who believe their whim trumps Group Agency.

You clearly like these "egotistical snowflakes" you claim to have so much experience with enough to have invited them to the game in the first place.I'm not sure why you would call your friends something like this.

But also... yeah, that's why you have a mature conversation with that person... You are talking to your friends, right?

 

[Theory of Games]

You clearly like these "egotistical snowflakes" you claim to have so much experience with enough to have invited them to the game in the first place.I'm not sure why you would call your friends something like this.

But also... yeah, that's why you have a mature conversation with that person... You are talking to your friends, right?

Some of us GMs, due to career, health or whatever don't have the luxury of gaming with established friends. I've started groups in multiple cities via MeetUp and Facebook ads. Additionally, I run for online groups. These are always strangers, but my fellow gamers still, and most of them appreciate a GM who steps outside their tiny relationship box to game with people they don't know.

 

[Blue]

Problem there is that the DM can't do much if any worldbuilding until after this discussion has happened; meaning that by the time play in fact begins (which in my case would probably be a year later) people's ideas and thoughts may have changed and-or the people themselves may have changed as some got tired of waiting and others joined in.

Since I do this every campaign, I am proof this isn't true.

I have certain ideas at start of campaign of where I want to go. I am maybe lightly into "Act II", and not married to any of it -- more it's so I can foreshadow but I can change things as long as it doesn't retcon anything that has ever hit the table.

I had a bunch of worldbuilding and campaign themes that I shared with the players so that they could create characters that fit. Last completed campaign the players had a bunch of large world-based changes they asked. Any of them I could have veto'd or opened for more discussion/compromise. They made some huge changes to the world, and I worked those into the worldbuilding in the two weeks before the first session. Completely? No. Just like I don't have complete ideas for character arcs from receiving their backstories during those two weeks, but I can put them in a city one mentioned or work something into a starting adventure.

Again, I'm not saying allow things that break your worldbuilding. But there's so much that's orthogonal to what you have built. Does your worldbuilding prohibit that there's an Artful Dodger orphen-master in a particular city that one player wants? Then allow it. Does it have spelljammers and inter-crystal sphere trade? Well, that will probably impact too many things so I'd probably go no.

So you see your worldbuilding only needs to deal with the changes that are already compatible with what you have, and don't need to complete integrating everything by first session, just what's going to impact that session.